Daily Archives: January 31, 2013

Funny how this works, isn’t it? Make up all sorts of grand claims about something and then when it is passed into law find out that making up stuff doesn’t change reality one iota:

Labor unions enthusiastically backed the Obama administration’s health-care overhaul when it was up for debate. Now that the law is rolling out, some are turning sour.

Union leaders say many of the law’s requirements will drive up the costs for their health-care plans and make unionized workers less competitive. Among other things, the law eliminates the caps on medical benefits and prescription drugs used as cost-containment measures in many health-care plans. It also allows children to stay on their parents’ plans until they turn 26.

To offset that, the nation’s largest labor groups want their lower-paid members to be able to get federal insurance subsidies while remaining on their plans. In the law, these subsidies were designed only for low-income workers without employer coverage as a way to help them buy private insurance.

You have got to love the outrageousness of the union’s desire I’ve emphasized. In essence it says, “we voted for something, got it wrong, and it it up to the taxpayer to bail us out”.

Oh, wait, that’s not outrageous at all is it?

That pretty much sums up the entitlement/welfare culture being so carefully nurtured by the left to a tee, doesn’t it?

Personal income rose a sharp 2.6% in December, while consumer spending rose 0.2%. The PCE Price index, an inflation measure, was unchanged at both the headline and core levels. On a year-over-year basis, personal income rose 6.9%, while spending rose 3.6%. The PCE price index rose 1.3%, with a core rate increase of 1.4%.

Electricity prices are rising in Germany – and citizen with a low-income are suffering particularly. They are at risk of fuel poverty. 10 to 15 percent of Germans are now struggling to pay their energy bills. 600,000 households have the electricity turned off every year.

Remember, Germany ran scared after the Fukushima disaster and dumped nuclear power (because, you know, German has so many earthquakes and tsunamis). They then went “green”. Result? See above?

The CEOs of manufacturing industries are warning that production in Germany is at risk because of low energy prices in the United States. The energy prices there are now only a third of those in Germany. “Many industrial companies are planning to build new factories in the U.S. and not in Europe because of low energy prices there,” said Gisbert Rühl, chief of steel trader Kloeckner. “We are now reacting to this development and plan new business units in the United States.” To move production to the U.S. is especially attractive for companies in energy-intensive industries such as steel and aluminium or chemistry.